In the places where I’ve tried to match up relatives using DNA only, it can get REALLY REALLY difficult really quickly. Things don’t overlap all that cleanly and there’s a LOT of speculation. I’d say that most of the “family tree” work really still has to be done with regular genealogy, tracking down parents and grandparents (and making sure that you’re not from a neighbor’s kid your g-g-grandparents took in because their parents died / went to jail, etc). Barring that, the closest you can get in some cases is a tribe/clan/etc. For example, my Irish roots turn into a big puddle of mush when I get beyond a certain date. Why? Because they all used a lot of the same names in the same area – married and had kids and had zero creativity with naming and so there’s no way to really tell. But then again, it ALMOST doesn’t matter because back then people didn’t move as much unless there was some kind of resettling because everybody was broke unless they had wealth – and with wealth come better record keeping. So, Irish just becomes mush but since EVERYBODY ELSE from that area has the same record keeping problem, I’ll probably would end up showing up as related to them and them to me so it ends up not mattering so much.

In the places where I’ve tried to match up relatives using DNA only, it can get REALLY REALLY difficult really quickly. Things don’t overlap all that cleanly and there’s a LOT of speculation.
I’d say that most of the “family tree” work really still has to be done with regular genealogy, tracking down parents and grandparents (and making sure that you’re not from a neighbor’s kid your g-g-grandparents took in because their parents died / went to jail, etc).
Barring that, the closest you can get in some cases is a tribe/clan/etc.
For example, my Irish roots turn into a big puddle of mush when I get beyond a certain date. Why? Because they all used a lot of the same names in the same area – married and had kids and had zero creativity with naming and so there’s no way to really tell.
But then again, it ALMOST doesn’t matter because back then people didn’t move as much unless there was some kind of resettling because everybody was broke unless they had wealth – and with wealth come better record keeping.
So, Irish just becomes mush but since EVERYBODY ELSE from that area has the same record keeping problem, I’ll probably would end up showing up as related to them and them to me so it ends up not mattering so much.

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